Monday, December 6, 2010

I hate remembering passwords and I don't like creating accounts on sites and worrying they are storing my password incorrectly. I love OpenID because it solves those two issues for me by enabling OpenID sites to use an already existing account for login. For example I use my gmail account on Facebook and StackOverflow to login.

In the OpenID: field enter the url for your OpenID provider (google's url is https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id)

Click the Login button

Under the 'Register a new account' section change the first name, last name, display name, and email address.

Save the changes, logout, and log back in to ensure it worked.

DotNetNuke leverages the ASP.NET membership provider infrastructure and I plan on incorporating it into future projects I work on. The biggest issue I see with the technology is that most implementations today require entering your OpenID provider URL. I think this is bad user interface. I like how StackOverflow shows pictures of many providers allowing a user to select their provider without needing to memorize or lookup a URL.